Master Mason
by The Scorpion
Summary: After designing palaces for kings in the Middle East and before settling in Paris to construct the finest Opera House in Europe, Erik established himself in Belgium and built ordinary houses.
1. Dispassionate

Hello all!

I was inspired to write this from the random desire to prove a point about "other woman" Phantom stories (which I am usually so firmly against). I know that doesn't make any sense now, but it will later ;) This is a legitimate, serious phic, not a parody or anything like that. It's inspired by the section of Kay's novel's timeline, but deviates from it, of course, for my own designs and, as always, to stick true to Leroux!.

Either way, I thought, back when I started it, that this might be a nice break from my horror phics for anyone who's been a little too terrified by my style in the past... I hope you enjoy this one! Please leave a review and let me know what you think!

P.S. Just remember with this...It's your Scorpion :) Trust me.

* * *

"Then, tired of his adventurous, formidable, and monstrous life, he longed to be someone 'like everybody else.' And he became a contractor, like an ordinary contractor, building ordinary houses with ordinary bricks."

-Gaston Leroux, _The Phantom of the Opera, _Epilogue

"The service I offered was unique in many ways. It was customary for an architect to arrange contracts, not to build himself. It was also customary for an architect to meet his clients, but I steadfastly refused to do so. . . . It became fashionable to have a house designed and built by the mysterious, elusive architect who merely signed his plans _Erik_."

-Susan Kay, _Phantom, _Erik 1856-1881

* * *

**Dispassionate**

Red lace. Blood spilled in oil spirals patterns that entwine more exquisitely than dye in vinegar. A pity blood only spills in one color. It disturbed Erik that the beautiful sample of polished marble he studied brought bloody thoughts to his mind. How quaint that the stone favored to construct those most sanctified of monuments remarkably resembles lacerated flesh. Ribbons of color veining in an out of neutral stone that might as well be petrified tissue. How ghastly that buildings and statues of marble do not breathe and sweat under the sun but instead remain like tombs. Each house of marble was a tomb. Bricks on the other hand...Bricks of sand or clay or lesser stone...Somehow they were not as depressing. Gorgeous, grandiose marble is dug from the quarries beneath the darkness of the earth, whereas bricks—ordinary, inexpensive bricks...They are baked in the sun...

"Who is she?" The uncertain voice cut through Erik's thoughts.

Erik tucked the red tile from his sight beneath some unrolled designs and looked up to Leger, his official intermediary, who stood on the opposite side of the desk where Erik sat. "Yes."

The man hesitated momentarily. "You surprise me."

"Really." Erik found Leger's inability to explicate remotely amusing. He took a new pencil from the lacquered box on his desk and inspected its point.

"It's not like you, you know."

"To ask?"

"Yes."

Erik almost sighed. "Yes, I know."

He waited for something more from Erik, but when the architect did not speak, Leger repeated, "Then...Who is she?"

Erik put the pencil down and folded his hands. "If you don't mind."

"Well," Leger cleared his throat and began, with a winning air. "Come up from the north part of France...A widow. She has traveled here without entourage for no other reason than to seek you out, personally."

Erik stood restlessly. "What sort of bourgeois widow with means to acquire a domestic architect has need for one?"

"One with unfinished business." Leger watched his employer wander to the large arcing office windows that were now black with night and wet with rain.

"Some flush eccentric who wants a dazzling new house to celebrate the liberty granted to her by her husband's demise."

"Not at all." Leger tried not to be put off by Erik's inattention and attempted to resume his description. "Her father was an architect and her grandfather as well, so, naturally, she married one."

"How like a widow to give her life's story in a preliminary meeting."

Leger made no comment and continued, "Her husband, apparently quite renown..."

"Late husband." Erik interrupted a third time.

"Yes." He then said nothing further.

Erik did not seem to notice. "She must have a catalogue of houses behind her. She is easily bored, I take it?"

"No, it's not..." Leger fingered the leather of his satchel as he carefully chose his phrasing. "It is a bit more convoluted than that, monsieur."

Erik laughed sharply at that exertion of respect. "Forgive me for my presumption. How rude of me."

Leger answered flatly, "You outdo yourself, monsieur."

"New news?"

"Not at all." It was regrettably a fact.

Erik smirked beneath his mask. And then it was he who reverted to the topic of attention, jumping to the heart of the matter with an instantaneous change of tone. "And so she wants to meet with me?"

"Desirously so. She said that, and I quote, despite her considerable efforts to select you as her choice contractor, she will refuse to allow you the commission unless you agree to meet with her."

"_She_ will refuse _me_! What impertinence. Now I couldn't accept her commission even if she relinquished the idea of a meeting." The tiger of Erik's stubborn loathing for audacity automatically turned its tail against all idea of honoring such impudence with consideration. "Why didn't you give her the usual answer?"

"I did, of course." Leger instinctively took a step toward the door.

Erik watched his assistant closely and drummed his fingers against the column at the window. "Then why are you telling me all this? Do you think I am amused? Or does it amuse you to pique my interest and then disappoint me? You do know how I feel about disappointment."

"I am only half done telling you."

"Her unfinished business? I do not care to hear the second half." Erik returned toward his desk.

"She said she knew very well that you do never meet with your clients. But she insists that for her particular needs, a meeting is necessary."

"They all think it is necessary! I have already decided to not give this widow's needs a second thought. Why are you still talking about her? Who is next?"

But Leger had worked for Erik long enough to be able to tell that the architect was not yet as through with this client as he claimed. "She said that she knew you would refuse."

"Oh, she knows me, does she?"

"The reputation of your inflexibility and bad temper with clients radiates farther than you might think."

Erik paced back to the windows. "And yet they continue to beat down my office doors."

"That is neither here nor there."

"Is there a point?"

"So you want the second half after all?" The older man smiled candidly with his modest victory over Erik's curiosity.

Erik pointedly ignored his own reflection in the dark windowpane and instead focused on Leger's. "My patience with you has never been thinner." But he did not say no.

"Simply put," Leger successfully concluded, "she said you would change your mind after you looked at this." He produced a large document envelope from his satchel, but made no move to approach Erik.

Erik shifted his gaze from the reflection to the night beyond the glass to suppress the immediate inquisitive consciousness. "I would, would I?" A useless effort. He turned back around to face Leger. "What is it?"

"I did not break the seal."

"Of course you didn't." Erik left the window. "Give it back to her."

Leger boldly set the envelope atop the sheaves of papers on Erik's desk. "She insisted I leave it with you."

Erik shot him a glaring look. "Insisted? How much did she give you?"

"It was not a matter of quantity," Leger answered with a grin.

"And why are you so interested in aiding her cause?" But Erik could well assume the answer, "There was a promise of more."

"One never knows." The ambiguity of the comment certainly was intended.

Suddenly, Erik guessed how his assistant could so audaciously defy him. "Is she beautiful?"

Leger only grinned again in response before saying, "She seemed like she might know a thing or two."

Erik looked away and shook his head with a mixture of amused disenchantment. "Might I remind you that you are a married man?"

"Perhaps," Leger conceded. Then, surreptitiously, he added, "But you're not."

Erik spun sharply to face him. "Watch your implication."

With a chuckle, Leger lifted a hand in his defense. "Watch your own. Women really aren't as difficult as all that, you know." He falsified an apathetic shrug. "You're still young, wealthy, and successful in the business, and practically a regional celebrity for your brilliance. Just because you have a face only a mother could love—"

"My mother hated me and my face," Erik snapped.

"I just mean to say—"

"You," Erik cut him off, "who have never even seen my face, you would do well to remember that your financial well-being is at my mercy."

Leger was not yet put off, and he eased back in with his best endeavor of persuasiveness, "What I meant to say was that with this widow's particular..._appreciation_ for architects...she did not seem like the sort of woman to mind if a man were to keep his mask on."

"Get out." Erik had absolutely no tolerance for lewdness.

"I'll just leave this here with you, then." He gave the envelope on the desk a pat.

"Get out."

With a parting nod of assent, Leger quickly left the office to return to his own station in the front lobby.

Alone, Erik resumed his seat at his magnificent, imported drawing desk. He picked up a pencil and directly dove into the unimportant design that happened to be on the top of these papers. It took him a few moments of blind frustration before he realized that the pencil had not made a single mark on the page. He sat back in his chair and stared at it. The pencil was dull. The wood snapped and broke to splinters in his hand before he realized what he had done.

Where was the new one he had just earlier taken from the box? And why was the organization of his desk in such a deplorable state? In a short fit of aggravation, he swept the rolls of papers from the sloped surface to a no less ordered array on the carpet.

Well...At least now the desk was clean. He leaned forward in his chair and ran his hands through his thick dark hair above the mask. It was because he was between projects. Yes, that was why he felt this intense...What was it? Exasperation—a maddening mixture of exhaustion and restlessness that left his insides feeling twisted.

Damn that Leger! Why did he even have to mention that last client? He knew damn well where the boundaries stood with Erik, and he toyed at the edge of the line as if it truly amused him to unsettle Erik's composure. What sort of crack was this ridiculous proposal meant to be? Did the man want his compensation penalized? Perhaps he needed to be reminded of where he would have been now if not under Erik's employ.

Erik sighed and bent to retrieve the rolled scrolls from the floor. He took them to their place on the shelves against the opposite wall and then returned to take care of those unfolded documents. That done, all that remained on the carpet were the missing pencil, a key ring, the marble tile, and that cursed envelope.

Erik did not pick up the envelope. What did he care of this envelope? Or of this widow whose name he had not even learned?...With her presumptuous conviction that he would agree to meet with her, of all clients, when he never dealt in person with any man, much less a woman! Erik and women did not even exist in the same world. It was difficult enough for Erik to find a place in the human race; in no way did he even dare conceive of encroaching on mankind's other half.

He did not care what was in the envelope. But it was at the moment when he told himself this that he wanted to know what was inside. He did not care whatsoever what it was that was inside, just that he _knew_ what it was. It disappointed him that curiosity was conquering his indifference. Perhaps it was the weariness...His mind ordinarily did not rebel against him this way. Better to ignore the envelope completely and forget it was there.

But he could not leave it there on the floor to tempt him until the room was cleaned. He picked it up finally, and as soon as it was in his hands, they itched to break the seal.

No. Burn it. Light the furnace and burn it. Yes. Erik opened the grate.

No. He did not want to burn it. He would have it returned to her. Unopened. The snub would be satisfying. Yes. Erik moved to the door.

No. Return it opened. The rebuff would be more filling when this presuming widow saw that even after fully knowing what was inside this mysterious envelope, Erik would never compromise his principles. Yes...

Erik opened the envelope.

The crash of the office doors bursting open into the foyer made Leger jump as he was putting on his hat to leave for the night, but what truly shocked him was Erik's simple, clipped command:

"Arrange the meeting."

The doors slammed shut as loudly as they had opened. Leger stood silently by the stairs for several long minutes, uncertain that he had heard correctly, but too apprehensive to go back to the office and venture a query. But no other sounds emerged from inside the room, and finally, bewildered, Leger went home.


	2. Shattered

**Shattered**

It was getting late. Warm rain had been soaking the cobalt carpet under the open window for hours, but Erik needed air. The extra candles he had lit trembled in the night breeze. Erik had been born a creature of the dark, and his eyes were more adept to it than a cat's, but somehow, just now he could not seem to get enough light. All the lamps were turned up to full flame, and more wax was melting than in a cathedral, but it was still not enough. He needed to see. He needed to understand. More light...Just a little more. Perhaps if he found one more candle to light, it would become clear to him, it would make sense...

But he found the box empty just as it had been when he'd checked it an hour before. He returned to the inferno he had made of his desk. The single pale blue sheet of paper gave the impression of the subject of some satanic ritual surrounded there by all that fire. The document was small, only a part of a full print, but it was not a copy. It must have been cut directly from the original design. It shocked Erik that someone could do such a thing to something such as this. Who could ever bring himself to butcher something so...remarkably extraordinary...?

There were no just words for what this was. Sheer unachievable brilliance... Even in Erik's compulsive studies of the most progressive architects, designers, and draftsmen, world-famous to tragically-unknown, he had never before seen anything like what was drawn on this paper. The flawless complexity, the ingenuity of it...It was an onslaught to even Erik's multifaceted mind. And yet it was so purely simple...So formulaic that it seemed ridiculous that Erik, in all his creative capacities, had not thought of it himself. The structure itself was actually similar to something he had included in his latest project, but his designs now paled past primitive in the shadow of this one he studied. Now he felt trite shame in his previous pride. Hubris was always a downfall, wasn't it?

His need to know begged for the identity of the designer. Whose was this? Was it _hers_? Impossible. Erik could not let himself accept that idea. Immediately and resolutely he denied all notion that this mysterious, nameless woman who had sought him out personally could ever possibly be the author of this...genius. For that would be far too terrifying, wouldn't it? And there were so many other obvious explanations, weren't there? The woman moved in architects' circles...Perhaps some acquaintance... Perhaps some cousin of a friend, or husband's brother in law... Only envisioning the designer as someone that far-removed from the woman who had been in this very building only that morning eased Erik's tension. But what contractor would ever allow something like this to be taken from him, cut up, and handed to someone like Erik? Perhaps it was stolen. Was this little piece of stimulation a bribe? Or an offer? Black market blueprints? The thought was ridiculous, but somehow, with this particular drawing, it made sense to Erik right now. He could think of many architects who would avariciously pay any price to pass off such plans as their own. Is that why this stranger had shown him so torturously little of what must be the greatest work he had ever hoped to see? Erik would never bend to dream of counterfeiting himself, but all the same, he could not be shown so little and ever feel at ease again. And now how could he see the rest? He was trapped.

The wet air from the window was no longer enough. Erik felt light-headed. He needed to get out. He needed assurance. He returned the document to the safety of its oiled envelope and then left the room too quickly to think of putting out any of the lights.

Once out of doors and pelted steadily by the rain, he slowed his pace as he took the steps from the main level of the building, where his offices were located. The only storefront beneath it was halfway below ground level. It and the basement of the building were leased by a mortician's and embalmer's, but everything above that was Erik's. His contractor's offices took up the whole of the mezzanine main floor of the building, and the two more floors above, he did with as he pleased. The house was not as morbid a combination as one might predict, however, as the continual array of flowers adorning that lowest level offered fresh distraction in the winter and overriding fragrance in the summer.

Erik glanced briefly down into the windows of the mortuary, as he always did in passing, of respect and intrigue. Six new coffins he could see, different sizes, but all painted white. And the yellow lilies on the sill were wilting. Probably from the heat down there...Not a good sign.

The construction project Erik had been recently wrapping up was at a site less than a mile from his offices. Although it was not always an option, he preferred to keep his work close at hand. After residing his whole life in the best and worst to offer of one end of Europe to Asia and everywhere in-between, he had become weary of travel, and any place beyond walking distance was detestable. The rain beat coherence back into his thunderstruck self, and he welcomed the sensation without bothering to cover his head with hat or hood. It must have been past two o'clock, and he did not anticipate the conflict on the street he would have encountered in the day as he did when he had need to go about. No facial artifice he attempted ever managed to avoid him that annoying, inevitable clash with society. Even if not one person said a word beyond polite formality, it was not as if there was ever pleasant conversation. Those Erik worked with and employed did what it took to earn their pay and avoid his short, artistic temper, but those with whom he could speak more than give orders were frustratingly few. He had worked with laborers as long as he could remember in those times when building was the focus of his life, but now that he had settled down after being spoiled with the power of politics and the magic of manipulation, a great part of him still missed the sense of having control over something greater than the building of a simple house.

Simple, yes... This house was simple. Simple in comparison to the spectacles he had built in the past and much more so in comparison to the design in the envelope now tucked within his cloak. But that is what this client had wanted: Simple, ingenious elegance. And it had been a challenge for Erik; such simplicity was very difficult to maintain in a structure still so sophisticated. But Erik never began a project that was not a challenge; how he hated to be bored.

The house was finished enough so that the doors and gates could be locked and a watchman for the site no longer needed to be on the payroll. However, the roof had still not been completed and rivulets of the rain penetrated edges of the protective tents and spider-webbed the interior walls.

Erik passed through the front rooms of the ground floor, criticizing his work with a new, frustrated judgment. Each new house he built was always better than the last, and this, his latest, the best. So why did it seem now to him as if a child had designed it? He was good, he knew he was good. Isn't that why he had been sought after by the rulers of Asia Minor and now desired by the crème of European society? He was more than an oddity to be collected, he was good... But that tiny piece of a drawing was laughing at him with all of its deserving grandeur.

That pointed archway was dull, those slender columns were inane, and this central courtyard ached of a Pompeian stereotype. Erik took out the envelope. He would go upstairs where his construction reminded him of what was in this design and masochistically compare just how far removed he was from the brilliance.

As he stepped around the fountain, he was diverted by what sounded like a groan. He stopped and quickly looked about himself. Who had followed him in here? Who dared to disrupt such a personal moment! His eyes searched every dark curve and corner, but no one was there.

It was not until he turned back to continue that he became quite aware of the man sprawled out amid dark burlap sleeping in the fountain. A curly red beard hid half of his face and a wide-brimmed Spanish hat pulled down over the eyes hid the other half.

Trespasser. Erik frowned and returned the precious envelope to the shield of his cloak. He stepped down into the dry fountain and moved across it quickly to take the stranger roughly by the shoulder and shake him awake.

"Get up."

The man lifted a heavy hand to search for the edge of his hat and spoke, his French accented by some sort of British dialect, "You're late."

Erik stood back. "You're mistaken."

The trespasser pushed up the brim and his creased and green eyes widened as he saw that he was mistaken indeed. "Who are you?" he asked with an irritation that angered Erik.

"Get out of my house."

The man began untwisting himself from his burlap and challenged, "Your house? Beg your pardon, but no one lives here."

"This is private property."

"And I'm a private citizen." The man drew out from the rest of the material and pulled himself up onto the edge of the fountain before standing. "Now if you'll pardon me, I'm expecting company."

Erik was fully prepared to violently strike this stranger for interrupting his previous self-assault, but as he looked down at him now, he could not bring himself to do it. The man, who must have been almost ten years older than Erik, and even though he was standing on the ledge of the fountain at least five hands above where Erik stood, was still so much below Erik's height that he required looking down at in order to be seen. This little red-bearded stranger was less than a meter tall. Erik had known many people of such stature in his history, but he had not been prepared for the surprise from this disrespectful intruder.

The little man smirked with satisfaction. "Didn't expect that, did you?"

Erik made no response.

"It's never what you expect, don't you know?"

Erik was neither amused nor appreciative. "How did you get in here?"

"Not so difficult," he dusted off his shoulders with stubby fingers. "Likely the same way you did."

"Indeed. Leave now, or I will not wait to summon the police to expel you by force."

He snorted and began to reluctantly toss his loose sacks up out of the fountain. As it was, Erik was more than twice his size, and who knew what sort of doings a masked man was capable of in the dead of night. "Aren't you trespassing?"

Erik moved to the fountain's side and stepped out of it. He now towered so far above the man that when he craned his neck to look up at him, the Spanish hat fell off his head and to the floor. Erik made no move to help retrieve it as he spoke, "This is my house."

The intruder picked it up himself and pointedly dusted dirt from it that couldn't have existed in such a new building. "Are you the Baronette Von what his name is?"

"Hardly."

"Thought you didn't quite seem pompous enough. And he's a jolly corpulent man, isn't he? Bloody close though."

Erik kicked one of the sacks near where he stood so that it rolled over against the man's legs. "You are running out of time."

He picked it up along with the others and began towards the front door, but he kept an eye over his shoulder where Erik followed him. "This is my first eviction from a place I wasn't behind on payments for."

"Be quiet and leave. I am already tempted to make it your last."

At Erik's comment, the other man stopped at the end of the foyer and turned around to look up at Erik to study him very closely. "Don't I know you?"

Erik reached over the man's head and pushed the door open. "Be glad that you don't."

"Damn it all, I do! Spain, wasn't it! Oh, I remember you now! You weren't so big then, were you?"

The man snorted with a laugh of sudden understanding and victory so repulsive that Erik could hold back no longer. With a violent strike, Erik silenced the annoying giggles and blew the little man out the door. He cleared the steps completely, but instead of landing on the path below, he tumbled right into the arms of another man who had been about to come up into the house.

Erik did not realize that there was someone else there until the two separate grunts were made with the contact. He could only assume this was the company that had been expected.

The new stranger, who had somehow managed to gain entrance through the gates, set the old one down on the path. He was a Belgian of normal height who looked as if he were some sort of upper-class that had failed in effort to disguise himself as a peasant. He looked up at Erik's volatile form in the doorway and demanded in a half-drunken slur, "Who the hell are you?"

The smaller man was attempting to catch his breath as he picked up his sacks from where they had landed. "The Baronette Von Bastard has evicted us."

The Belgian knelt to help and asked in a whisper that was too loud, "He looks like he's up to no good, Johnny, don't you think?"

The little man looked back up at Erik and laughed again amid snorts. "Oh, no! Not at all! He's as ugly as sin under that mask and you ought to thank him for keeping it on!"

The Belgian stood again and swayed slightly as he eyed Erik, who remained a black statue in the doorway. After a long moment of contemplative silence, save for his companion's dying chuckles, the stranger turned away from the door to look down at him. "Well, we'd better hurry and find out someplace else then before my wife gets to wondering where I've gone."

A dazzling grin split the red beard, and he who had been called Johnny reached up and offered his arm to the Belgian. "By all means!"

The arm was accepted and the two started back to the gates with a saunter that was a combination of their strange difference in height and Belgian's drunkenness. When the door to the house slammed loudly behind them, the red-bearded man, now infected with gleefulness, turned around and cupped a small hand to his large mouth, "Don't you know? It's _never_ what you expect!"

Erik tried to pay the comment no attention and only remained behind the door long enough to make sure they were gone. It took much too long for his patience, but soon the echoes of singing had faded down the street and Erik was no longer tormented by off-key refrains of "Those old Spanish days..."

It was only an afterthought that he realized he should have kept an eye on them until he saw how it was they had passed through the gates. But it did not matter. He would hire a new watchman, and the problem would be solved without undue effort.

For some reason, Erik was feeling very weary. What was wrong with him? He did not even want to give thought to the stranger's comments about remembering him from Spain. He did not have the strength for that right now... He had let the little man get away and was sure he would never come across him again, but how unlike Erik... Ordinarily any man with the stupidity to reveal such familiarity would be dead before the second word, and yet Erik had done nothing but tell him to go away. And even more oddly, he found that he really did not care.

Apathy... How strange indeed. It was most unlike him. Depression? How? Why? Erik was unconquerable! But he knew why... Damn that envelope! Suddenly he wished he had never given into the curiosity that had made the excuse for him to open it! He wanted now to tear it to pieces! Destroy it and let that damn woman know, that messenger of devastation, he would compromise his principles for no one! He would never meet with her.

But he did not even have the strength to draw the document from his cloak. Why was there not a single chair in this house? He sat down on the ledge of the elevated hearth. But he was never one who could remain still for long, and soon his eyes began to roam its contours. He should have widened it at the base... Yes... Yes! That would have changed the whole shape of the room. He would have to remember that for next time. And those beams up above... He would never use those again.

And as depressing as all of it was, he realized his mind was exploding with an artistic and structural inspiration he had not felt in years! He tore the envelope from his pocket and pulled the document from it. Gripping it tightly, reverently in both hands, his eyes shifted from it to his house and back countless times over. Why had she only given him so little! He wanted to see more. He needed to see more. He would have to go through with it. There were far too few lines on this one page to ever satisfy him and the note that had been pinned to the back of it held far too few words... Those damned words in deplorably feminine handwriting: _I can show you more._


	3. Interdicted

**Interdicted**

It was a dark morning. A warm wind had come from the east to blow out the fog, but the grey clouds of the night lingered on and though the rain had ceased, it would not last. When Leger had arrived, he'd found the window to Erik's office still open and the carpet a mess. It was over an hour then before Erik had even appeared, and by that time Leger had made all arrangements. He had received a return message from their insistent widow immediately after he'd sent notice, and she had said she would be there before noon.

And so she had come, and Leger had shown her into the room adjacent to Erik's office, and there she waited.

"You were right."

Leger glanced across at Erik from where he was attempting to peel the hardened pools of melted candle wax from the wood of the architect's desk. "Aren't I always?"

"No." Erik's tone was suddenly firm in comparison to the distant quality of his previous words.

Leger waited for Erik to turn to face him, but when he remained frozen, he resumed his task. "But usually."

"Hardly."

"Occasionally?"

Erik merely shrugged and continued to stare through the one-way window in the door that gave him a view of his visitor in the next room. She was seated on the far side of another wooden desk, and she was waiting. Waiting for him.

"Then why do you listen to me?" Leger brushed the crumbling pieces into a wastebasket.

"I don't."

He chuckled and shook his head, clasping his hands loosely behind his back. "But I was right?"

"Yes."

Leger had absolutely no idea to what Erik was referring. He watched the back of the architect's black suit for a long moment of silence before asking, "What did I say?"

"She is beautiful."

"Ah!" A smile spread across the man's face. "But I did not say that, you did."

"Oh." Erik finally turned slightly to glance at his assistant. "Then I was right."

"I suppose you were…"

"What was it you said?"

"I said she looked like she had some…know-how in her. And that she has a special appetite for architects."

Erik shook his head in disdain and looked back to the window. "I shall have to see her eyes to know that much."

"Ah, her eyes!" Leger exclaimed in a breath of false infatuation, pressing his hand to his heart.

Erik ignored him and lifted a hand to the doorknob, but paused there. He turned back to meet Leger's eyes again. "From where in France did you say she's come?"

He shrugged slightly and crossed to join Erik at the window. "The north."

"Paris?"

He glanced through the glass. "No, I think she said the construction site would be closer to the border."

"I asked you where she was from."

Leger shook his head with uncertainty and could only offer, "She reeks of the city."

Erik gave him a hardened look.

"Forgive me monsieur, but as I said, she was not very forthcoming with any details. Why don't you go ask her?" He lifted a hand to gesture beyond the door. After all, Erik had been postponing his entrance now for nearly half an hour.

Erik's knuckles had begun to turn nearly transparent from how tightly he gripped the doorknob.

Leger took a step back. "I am your assistant, monsieur, not your spy."

"You had better check your tone if you wish to remain anything at all." Erik turned the handle.

"Yes, monsieur."

He did not look back to Leger again before opening the door and leaving the room, but added, "You may send in the carpet cleaners now."

"Yes, monsieur."

Erik shut the door softly behind him.

She looked up to him slowly and did not rise. Her entire frame where she sat was stiff, and Erik felt rather certain that the cause must be his appearance.

He did not speak and moved toward her with no sense of urgency, taking his time to study her. The long sleeves and high neck of the black bodice of her black dress left not one area of visible skin as matching gloves concealed her hands and a sheer veil of black lace extending from the wide-brimmed black hat that hid her hair and was adorned with what could only have been raven's feathers, covered her face. She looked much more as if she had just come up from the mortuary beneath his office than from the north part of France.

Erik took his seat on his side of the desk and was the first to speak:

"I understood that you were a widow, but I had not been told you were still in mourning."

She lifted a black lace covered hand to her veil and brushed it back over the brim of her hat to reveal her face.

"Hadn't you?" Her voice was low, and Erik could not be certain if the tone was natural or contrived.

"Well," she continued, "I understood that you usually refuse to meet with clients, but I did not think you would hide your face behind a mask."

Erik did not respond and merely placed the envelope on the otherwise empty tabletop between them.

She folded her hands, resting her wrists on the edge of the table and glanced at it only briefly before lifting her eyes again to his mask.

"Did you like it?" she asked calmly.

"I think you owe me an explanation," Erik began with measured indignation.

Her gaze broke with his and drifted to the corners of the room. "Where to begin…"

"Whose is it?" he cut in too sharply.

Her eyes returned to the envelope. "Do you want more?"

"_What_ is it?"

She lifted a hand and turned in her seat, bending to reach below Erik's field of view. "My husband was an architect and designer, monsieur."

Erik made no move in his seat to attempt to watch her actions. "Do you mean to tell me this was his?"

She straightened, bringing with her a long tube, which she uncapped as her eyes returned to level with his. "Monsieur, I want you to build me a house."

"Madame," Erik said curtly, reaching across the table and clasping the tube to stop her actions as she had begun to pull out a roll of papers. "I will do nothing for you if you do not answer my questions."

She started slightly, but then only looked down to his hand, seeming to study it for a brief pause, then looked back up to him. "But first." She blinked. "Don't you want to see?"

It was a long moment of hesitant silence before he withdrew and allowed her to continue.

As she spread the roll of blue and white sheets out onto the table with a ginger touch, she separated them as she spoke:

"They are not in order…But you will understand."

Some of them were the whole pages of blueprints while others were small pieces that seemed to have been cut or torn deliberately from the larger sheets. A few of the drawings were barely sketches while others were fully detailed drafts.

Erik pulled the closest papers to his side of the desk, handling them nearly as delicately as she did but scanning them with scarcely concealed ravenousness.

"My husband and I never had any children," she began, a tremor in her voice only half hidden by its softening volume. "This was going to be our child."

He did not answer her. He had barely even heard her. Piece after piece, his flickering eyes devoured every detail of the designs. This was not right. This was not fair! These designs were clearly drawn by the same artist, and they were ingenious, even brilliant, but absolutely nothing in comparison to the small piece that had tormented him all night.

She had continued to speak, "These were ours. Both of ours. He drew them…I told him what I wanted, and he made it appear. It was like the miracle of creation…"

He looked up to her very slowly and she gasped softly at the sudden intensity of his gaze.

"Madame, you have deceived me."

She stared back at him and a hint of color rose to her pale cheeks, but she folded her hands on the table again so that they covered edge of the original envelope and straightened where she sat.

"Did you think I would have sent any less than the best?"

Erik dropped the sheets he held, and pushing back his chair roughly, he stood.

"It is incomplete," she said, remaining in her seat. "I want _you_ to complete it."

"I design my own houses," he stated with flat restraint.

"I know," she insisted with gently wavering apprehension. "I have studied your progress. Your work is inspired. I have never seen anything near to it, not since my husband died. Monsieur, architecture has always been part of my life…"

"You have my condolences," Erik cut in, "Madame, on the death of your husband, but this," he gestured to the curling sheets. "It was his dream, not mine. I am not interested in tying up another man's loose ends."

She stood abruptly in a sudden desperate explosion of emotion, "Do you know how long I have waited to find an architect with even the most remote possibility of doing him justice? Do you know what it took for me to find you and come here!" Taking a sudden breath, her next words were more composed, "I am a very wealthy woman, monsieur. And I know…I know you _must_ be interested. You've met with me. You never meet with anyone. They have all tried and they fail. I did not fail."

She looked across the desk to him where he had remained absolutely still and as expressionless as his mask as she'd spoken.

"Please, monsieur." The hard edge was gone from the lowness of her voice as suddenly as it had come. "I had to see you in person because I knew you would refuse if you did not see for yourself what this means to me."

"I am not interested…"

"When he died," she interrupted him before he could refuse too decisively, "My world died with him. We never had any children. As an artist, you must understand the meaning of passion. This house was our true passion, and I cannot complete it on my own. I cannot draw. I have so much in my mind that I want to bring into the world, but without him, I am impotent. I am a barren wife to a dead husband. When I saw the article with the etching of your design for the Baronet Von Kennt, I _saw it_." She bent over the table to pick up the initial envelope and continued even more softly, "Just like him…I knew you were the one. It was like waking from the darkest of dreams… There is no one else like you in all of Europe! I would know, for I have looked. I had given up all hope of ever seeing my child come into the world."

Erik turned away but could not escape her final piteous entreaty:

"Only a man of your genius could understand. How could you abort the birth of a prodigy so perfect as this?"

Erik remained silent for several moments if only to be certain she had finished speaking, then without turning back again to look at her, he moved to the door, saying only:

"I will send you word of my decision. Good day, madame."

Then before she could respond, she was left alone again in the room.

Leger was near the door when Erik reentered his office. Too near. And Erik could tell he had been watching them through the one-way glass.

"So," the man grinned. "How were the eyes?"

"Go away," Erik ordered.

He said nothing more then and slipped past Erik to go into the room to show the lady to the door.

Alone Erik moved to the window of the room, barely noticing the results of the carpet cleaners' work. He pulled back the drape to let the cold grey light in and saw that the wind had picked up again. Leaves, prematurely fallen, tumbled in gusts down the sidewalk, and he watched in thoughtless silence as a two black horses tucked their heads against it as they pulled a hearse away down the street.

Why should he help her? She was a client like any other. It was not his job to complete unfinished business. He was a contractor on his own terms. He built his own houses. But any other client would never have managed to meet with him in person… He would turn her down. If he summoned Leger right now, he could catch her before she departed and give her the news.

But then, from the corner of his eye, he saw her to the left of where he gazed out of his windowpane. The moment she left the doorframe and moved onto the steps that led to the street from the mezzanine level, a hand flew to her hat as the wind caught harshly against its wide brim. He shifted the curtain as he turned to watch her so that she would not notice him should she look. She set the tube she carried against the stone banister, and turning her back to both the wind and Erik, she pulled the pins from her hat, tucked them away, and removed it, holding it tightly under one arm. She turned again on the step and Erik saw her clearly then in all her macabre splendor. Her face could not have been more perfectly shaped and featured, but the contrast of the blackness of her garments and her now visible hair cast a waxen sallowness to her too-pale skin. And she had been wearing makeup! Too much of it, he thought, when he had been close enough to see her face clearly, and now that he could see her hair as it was blown loose from its pins, the deep black of it could only have been dyed. She was not tall, but she was fashionably thin, and he could see how perfectly tailored her black dress of mourning was styled to accentuate her figure. And her placid smile seemed almost like a smirk to him now.

Leger had been right. She was beautiful. Beautiful, and completely artificial.

Erik released the curtain as he watched her retrieve her tube and continue down the steps, her black hair whipping freely about her black shoulders.

He would turn her down.

She was helped by a footman into the hired coach that was waiting for her that, if only had it been longer, could have been easily confused with the hearse that had just earlier departed.

He scowled in irritation behind his mask and pulling the curtains completely, turned away from the window to return to the dark comfort of his office. What did he care of this black widow and her pretentious airs? He would turn her down. He wanted to turn her down. He wanted to see her smirk fade to that nervous desperation he had seen on her face, in her eyes, as her fear grew. He held the fate of her prosperity in his hands and the power was delicious. How dare she tear apart his security in a single night with one wretched envelope? She deserved dismissal and destruction.

And yet… She had been right, hadn't she? As an artist, he understood. And how could he do anything at all now…but agree?


	4. Unspoken

**Unspoken**

It was red too, of course. Why would it be white? Not on an evening like this. Not when Erik's mind felt as filled with holes as if maggots, along with the rest of the world, had already mistaken him for a corpse. As it moved above his fingers, he imagined them bathed in blood, and then, had it been visible, his assistant surely would have been frightened by the brutality of his scowl.

Leger watched the architect from where he sat at his desk in the reception office amid the balancing of account books. The end of the day had already come and gone and Leger would have been on his way home by now to have dinner with his wife, but he knew that when Erik emerged from his private office this way and hovered about like a wraith before the hearth, he wanted something. And when Erik wanted something, one did not dare attempt to leave.

Finally, as his employer had still not yet said a word since the interruption of the accounting, Leger attempted, "You have been turning that wine around in that glass for nearly a quarter of an hour."

Erik did not look at him. "Well, I cannot very well drink it until you go away."

"Is that a dismissal?" He closed the book with a apprehensive sigh.

"No. Finish your work." Erik paced once or twice more, set the wine glass down on an empty pedestal table, then picked it up again and turned back to the fire.

Leger's hand hesitated over the cover of his book. "Why did you pour it?"

"Why does one feel thirst?" He set the glass down again with a rough clink and turned abruptly away from it.

"You make me nervous!"

"It is not your job to be nervous," Erik snapped and he waved a hand to Leger's book before folding his arms behind his back and pacing nearly out of the room.

The assistant tried not to chuckle too tensely. "How can I do my job when I am nervous?"

"Finish your work." And then he was gone. But only for a moment before he appeared again and once more found his glass where he had left it. "Take a letter."

Leger obediently slipped the book into a drawer to replace it on the table with a sheet of stationary.

Erik continued, his focus beyond the moment, "To the Madame…Does she have a name?"

"Regret." The inkwell was almost empty, he noticed, it would need imminent refilling.

The architect's glare stopped the tapping of the pen against the metal edge. "I am not in the mood for what you consider humor."

Leger stared back at him and spoke quickly, "It is not my humor, monsieur, it is hers."

Erik was silent for a moment, then tipped his masked face to once more look down into the untouched wine. "She did not give you her real name?"

"It is how all her correspondence has been signed. M. Regret."

"M.?" He tilted his head to the side to look over again. "Surely not to mean…Well, surely."

Leger nodded. "No doubt, her initial."

"No doubt," Erik answered with a dryness that spoke that he surely believed her initial were more likely to be "Z."

Leger waited. He considered refilling the inkwell while he waited, but each turn of Erik's hand made him hesitate. Dinner would be stale and his wife would be cross by the time he got home. Finally he dared a soft clearing of his throat. "If you tell me yes or no, I will compose it for you."

"The site is too far away," the architect snapped.

Leger sighed and put his pen to the paper. "No, then?"

Erik was pacing again. "I have no interest in finishing another man's business."

"Then you decline?" But he lifted the pen.

"She repulses me." A splatter of wine worked its way into the carpet.

He began writing. "You refuse."

"I accept."

"I don't ask questions." Leger folded the letter and tossed it into the waste basket, then began another one.

Erik glared at the spilt wine. "You do not know yourself very well." Perhaps this time he would not trouble the carpet cleaners.

"You do realize that the moment she reads this," Leger scraped a bit more ink out of the well and continued, "she will be at your door again, leaving powdery handprints on the banister."

"Make the appointment for four o'clock." The glass returned to the pedestal table. "Make her wait all day."

This assistant only glanced up briefly from his writing. "She is not the only one who will be waiting all day."

"Lock the door when you leave." And he was gone again.

Leger shook his head and finished the letter quickly in the silence that faded, but a smile spread across his face as he did. Sealing it, he rose jovially from his seat, smacking the stool back under the desk and crossed to the hearth to take it upon himself to down the glass of wine. He then dragged the heavy marble pedestal table across the carpet to reposition it over the stain before collecting his hat and at last going home.

Erik watched him descend the outside steps from where he was again positioned behind the curtains of his office window. Now he was alone. What had he done?

In the dark, for the lack of moonlight, the piles of leaves along the gutters looked for a moment to him like the dead in the streets of a land her preferred not to recollect.

He turned his back to it, and sighing, he pulled off his mask and flicked it onto the top of a low bookshelf. He ran his hands up over his face and back through his hair.

"Hmm," he muttered to himself. "Say it." But he did not.

Why does one feel thirst? Why does one feel hollow? He needed something inside of him and he needed it immediately, but when he tried to pinpoint what that something was, he was at first at a loss and at second thinking of her designs.

She had shown him the best. _Lured_ him with the best. And that left what? Less than the best. But she had been right—would he have expected her to do anything else? _Expected _her…As if he knew her at all. He did not like strangers. He did not like impertinent women. He did not like clients. He did not like dyed hair and makeup and costumes—not without the theatre. He did not like it at all.

Erik found himself in a rather negative fame of mind.

"Say it!" he shouted to himself and abruptly tore the curtain off its hooks at the window. Twisting it, he glowered and then flung it aside before turning to go further back into the room again, striking at his death's forehead with his hand.

He needed to draw. He threw himself down to sit at his desk.

No, he needed to see what he had done. He was up again.

He had gone there the night before with eyes like a child disillusioned, but now he knew better. Now he knew where his power lie. It was coiled inside of him, ready and thirsty, like the Punjab lasso. It was impatient and snapping its jaws. It was frustrated and ready for the combat, but he was not in Persia and he was not nineteen and he was not that man anymore. He required to tell himself this often. The years of trick palaces and artful assassinations were long past. How many more ordinary houses would he have to build before he ever finally felt like an ordinary man?

Dead leaves took to flight as he swept past them on his way down the foggy street.

She wanted a miracle of creation, did she? This _artful _client. She wanted a surrogate father for offspring half-formed. Another god with hands to mold the clay of life and lips to give it breath when her own had abandoned her. Houses lived, houses breathed. As an artist, he understood. _Progeny…abortion_… Her words. He laughed aloud and the sound echoed back and forth between the buildings he passed. An old man walking a dog on the other side of the street stopped and stared, and Erik realized then that he had left his mask behind on the bookshelf.

Laughing again, he tipped the brim of his hat to the man who remained frozen as he passed by him, and then Erik went around the corner. Someone would be having nightmares tonight.

"Why does one feel ordinary?" he asked no one, and he avoided being seen for the remainder of his walk to the building site.

The new watchman would normally only have needed a gesture from Erik to allow him admittance, but he chose to avoid the guard and instead found his own way through the gate, making no sound to betray his presence.

The house was magnificent. He knew that it was. He would not have designed and built it to be less than magnificent. Circling its back gables, he sighed and pressed a hand over his heart. Yes, something within him was satisfied. But was it enough, he found himself wondering. Wine glasses are only ever filled halfway.

His palms itched, and so he went inside.

"Is there anyone here?" he called pervasively.

Of course there was no answer. He began to hum as he moved through the courtyard. "A taste of Italy for Von Baronet." And grasping the marble banister he launched himself up the first flight.

On the second level, carved accents curled about the corners of the ceilings like wisps of smoke that gave the effect of the comfort of warm, closed places even though the balconies opened up widely to the chilly autumning skies.

"Something to be said for simplicity," he half murmured, but even as he said it, he knew it would do little to reassure him. A flash in his mind's eye of the lines and curves and angles the little lady, Madame M. Regret, had shared on those soft, curling papers suddenly made him regain interest in the glass of wine he had left behind. Erik needed air.

Out on one of the balconies where the wind touched him without restraint, he had a clear view over the gate to the street, and therefore saw the man approaching the house long before he reached it. Who it was, he did not recognize by sight, but he walked as if he were both very rich and very drunk. Erik observed from above as he noticed the watchman and then altered course to go around and out of sight toward the back side of the property.

A scowl and the rustle of his cloak, and Erik was back to the ground level. As he crossed through the yet unplanted yard, he heard the voice calling from the other side of the wall and it was this that he recognized.

"Johnny!" The abrasive whisper of the same Belgian man from the night before was unmistakable to Erik's irritated ears.

"Johnny, I've got it!"

Erik folded his arms under his cloak and glanced back through the unfinished structure of the house with a frown to see if the watchman had heard. But there was only silence there, and no flashing of the lantern, so he turned his attention back and leaned against the wall.

"Johnny, is that you?"

"Johnny isn't here right now," Erik spoke clearly. "What have you got?"

There was a gasp and a scuffling sound. Perhaps the man had fallen—Erik wouldn't have doubted it in his state. Footsteps…and yet he was not running away.

Trailing a hand along the stones, Erik followed the sounds on the other side back toward the direction of the street.

"Who's that!" a hiccupped hiss finally asked once the corner was reached.

Erik did not answer him, but instead turned fully to the wall and, taking hold, climbed it easily. He crouched on the top edge and looked down to see the drunken man leaning back against it just below him, fanning himself anxiously with an old tricorn hat.

He drummed his fingers against the ledge by his foot for a moment before addressing the intruder impatiently, "What have you been told?"

The man jumped away from the wall with a strangled shout and, dropping the hat, staggered backwards to look up at the dark shape above him. With eyes that shone like angry stars, Erik could not be missed. "Baronet?" He shook his head and his boots scraped back through the leaves.

Erik leapt down from his perch and took hold of the other before he could run. He pulled him back and spun about to slam him against the wall. "Well?"

The drunkard did not answer, but he did stare wildly at the face that loomed over him, clear and horrific even in the dark and through inebriated haze.

Erik twisted his hands into the man's coat and pressed him more firmly against the uneven stones, grating his back into them. "I don't like you," he said flatly. "Or your little friend. Don't come back here."

The Belgian's mouth opened and closed, wordlessly, but not without a puff of foulness each time.

With a grimace, Erik pulled back to toss him aside.

The man stumbled into the street though he did not fall. "Johnny!" he gasped again, too high-pitched, his wide eyes roving up and down as if they hoped in desperation that his friend might still appear. And then he left, unevenly, but quickly, and Erik made certain this time to watch which way he went.

Strange, he thought when he was alone again. A pattern. A coincidence. A conundrum. And was it going to rain tonight too? He tilted his head back to the sky and then moved out to the middle of the street so that he could look up at the shape of the house with its tarps fluttering up high in the breeze.

The tricorn hat he would leave in the street to be run over by carriage wheels in the morning. Or perhaps by the carriage he heard approaching now. It was time to go elsewhere.

There had to be something more, he knew, he could not deny. But he would not say it. No, not tonight.

* * *


End file.
